


changes (turn, face the strange)

by uforock



Category: Final Space (Cartoon)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Coping, Gen, Season 2 episode 4 spoilers, autistic headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19837312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uforock/pseuds/uforock
Summary: breaking routine is hard. sudden, unexpected changes are hard.





	changes (turn, face the strange)

Little Cato looked both ways out the door, just double checking that nobody was watching. He wasn’t proud of this habit. Wasn’t proud of the way he used it like a vice. 

Wasn't proud of feeling like he still needed to hear his father's voice.

Wasn’t proud of how he had started to forget it. There were only a few phrases he could pick together in his head, clear in his dad’s voice. 

“Little Cato!”

“You’re still right here...”

“ _Gary._ ”

He shut and locked his door, waiting a few more seconds before pulling out the hologram device.

He started typing.

“Hey, son. I’ve missed you.”

He effortlessly typed in a few quick lines of code and the image of his father smirked, reassuring. 

“Hey, dad. Missed you too. I… I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately. About if you’d be proud of me or not.”

More typing. “Of course I’d be proud of you, kid! Look how far you’ve gotten! You got Gary back, you’re gonna save Quinn, and you have so many new friends!”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess so. What do you think of Ash?”

“What do _you_ think of Ash?”

He shrugged. “She’s cool. A little weird. Fun.”

He pushed a button and the hologram laughed. Little Cato just sat there for a while, looking at the static image of his dad.

“...Is this unhealthy?”

He typed out a _yes._

“Yes.”

“Is it my fault you died?”

He typed out a _yes._

“Yes.”

“...Yeah. Are you really dead?”

He typed out a _no._ He paused. He erased it.

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Little Cato.”

He kept typing, resting his chin on the desk.

“I love you. I’m proud of you. You can keep going. You’re gonna be okay. Take care of Gary for me, alright? I’m right here with you. You’re okay. I love you.”

He paused and wrapped his arms around his chest, squeezing tight, ears flat against his head. He was crying but no tears would come out, the well was dry. 

“I won’t forget you, dad. I love you.”

“I love you.”

He powered off the machine and put it away, leaning back in his chair and muttering to himself. “ _This is so unhealthy this is so unhealthy this is soooooo unhealthyyyy…”_

He got up and unlocked the door, going down to the mess hall of the ship to snack on something. His mind was going too fast to sleep but too slow to do anything productive, and he doubted anyone else was awake. the crew had all finally acclimated to being on the same sleep schedule, and nobody was _supposed_ to be awake right now.

But, sure enough, Gary was sitting perched on the table, playing solitaire in the dark. The light bulb above him flickered and the sight of Gary playing cards by himself left a strange, hollow feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t place. Something was wrong here. Something was _very_ wrong here.

“You can’t possibly be comfortable sitting like that, Gary.”

Gary jumped, knocking some of the cards off the table. “Crap, spidercat, you scared the hell outta me. What are you doin’ up so late?”

“I could ask you the same question, Thunder Bandit.” Little Cato jumped up onto the table, sitting next to him. Gary ruffled his mohawk and sighed.

“Well, if you must know, I couldn’t sleep. I’m not… this is the first new place I’ve slept in the last five years. It’s a bit rough,” he mumbled, leaning back onto his hand, running the other through his hair absentmindedly. Little Cato brought a knee up to his chest, looking up at him.

“Yeah, I get it. Breaking routine isn’t easy.”

Gary looked at him, eyes lighting up. “Yeah, exactly! It’s like, you’ve gotta adjust to a whole new _life_ after one thing changes. And, yeah, I mean, we do have to adjust to a whole new life now, but… back when it was just me on the Galaxy-1, one time we ran out of one kind of nutrient paste and I just… couldn’t eat the new stuff. It didn’t taste _bad_ , but it wasn’t what I was used to eating, so my brain wouldn’t let me eat it.”

“Yeah, it was like that in Lord Commander’s prison colony too! Things just… change, and it throws off _everything_. It’s weird. Do other people feel like this?”

“I’ve talked to Quinn about it, and she said yeah, but when I talked to-”

He paused, swallowing and shaking his head, thinking. His voice dropped from his excited rambling to something profoundly sad. “I talked to Avocato about it and he said he’s always been able to adjust to stuff like that quickly. So maybe it’s just some people?”

Little Cato stayed quiet for a while before scooting closer to Gary and resting his head on the human’s shoulder. 

“Yeah. Dad had different stuff. Like, he never drank water. Did you notice that?”

“Hey, I did notice that! What was up with that?”

“I don’t know! And he refused to wear anything that didn’t cover his neck. Said it made him feel weird.”

“I get that, I can’t have my arms uncovered or I feel weird.”

Little Cato nodded, nuzzling closer to him. “I can’t listen to playlists. I’ve gotta like, pick one song and play it for a whole day, then go to the next one.”

“Me too! I don’t actually wear this outfit every day, I have… copies of this shirt. Like, 4 of them.”

“That- that’s weird, but honestly that sounds awesome, I _wish_ I had more of this outfit so I didn’t have to wash it every few days.”

“Just do what I used to do and resign to being gross.”

“Ew, gross!”

“That’s the point!”

They stayed curled around each other for a good while, smiling, their smiles slowly fading. 

“I miss him,” Gary said. Little Cato looked up at him.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“It’s… it’s another thing I couldn’t… adjust to. Another change. Like, I wake up sometimes and expect to see him in the kitchen, or to hear him knocking around in his room, or-”

Little Cato wrapped his arms around Gary’s shoulder, climbing into his lap and curling up there. “Me too. I- I get it. I miss him.”

Gary hugged him back, swallowing back tears. It felt bittersweet to have someone who _understood_ , because while it was nice, this was a pain that neither of them would ever want another person to experience. 

It was strange. Different. Comforting. Painful. 

“Jeez, sorry for depressin’ out on you. I’ve been kinda keeping this all bottled up.”

“I get it. Better than a lot of people, I get it.”

“Yeah,” Gary smiled. “You really do.”

The silence stretched on. 

“Well, if you can’t sleep, I recently found out this thing has a movie room, and Ava has every movie ever made downloaded onto her hard drive. Wanna go watch the greatest movie of all time?”

“Hell yeah!”

“Hell yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> i promise ill get back to writing lovely in theory soon but i wanted to dabble in writing for the canon timeline again so i dont lose sight of their characters, yknow?  
> as always, please comment if you enjoyed this!! <3


End file.
